MEET THE NEW BOSS
Luminato’s new artistic director, Josephine Ridge, excited about challenge after a star turn Down Under.
Luminato went on a global fishing expedition to find its next artistic director and it has reeled in an Australian winner in Josephine Ridge.
“It’s a terrific challenge,” says Ridge, who has just completed a term as artistic director of the Melbourne arts festival, which hires its leads for three years.
Indeed she was so excited about moving to Toronto, working for Luminato and collaborating with CEO Anthony Sargent that she took the job after entertaining other offers. Her salary, $180,000, is at the upper end of the range mentioned in the job posting, but it’s less than she was earning in Melbourne.
“I’ve been to Toronto and it’s a dynamic place,” she told me Tuesday in a phone interview. “So I’m excited about finding the best ways to contribute to the city and its cultural life.
“Festivals are not just fun for two or three weeks. They can leave a footprint and make a meaningful contribution by creating new work, and we can generate projects that leave a lasting impact on a city.”
Ridge, 57, comes to Canada as an outsider so needs to get government clearance. She plans to arrive in time for Luminato in June, the last hurrah of her predecessor, Jorn Weisbrodt.
Luminato is seeking a temporary foreign worker’s permit; after Ridge moves to Toronto she will apply for permanent residency. She even plans to buy a house — but has to brush up on Toronto’s housing market before deciding what part of town she’d prefer — and will bring her art collection with her to the city.
Ridge was an only child. Her father, who was Jewish, moved to Australia from Poland to escape from the Nazis. Her mother came from a farming family in the Australian state of Tasmania.
“They were radically different, but I had a very lucky childhood,” she recalls. She became part of an adult circle, and was routinely taken along to plays, concerts and dance performances. “It was a rich and rewarding childhood,” she says.
Ridge has 30 years experience working in the arts world. As the general manager then executive director of the Sydney Festival for 10 years and then during her term as artistic director of Melbourne’s festival, Ridge had triumphs on both the artistic and the fiscal side: increasing box office and broadening the audience.
One of her biggest coups in Melbourne was her brilliant way of showcasing indigenous culture. In 2012, for the first time since 1835, in collaboration with the Ilbijerri Aboriginal theatre troupe, she revived Tanderrum, the ancient tradition of bringing five clans of Melbourne together for a welcome to the country at an ancient site.
It was far from a one-night stunt to open the festival for three consecutive years.
There were months of workshops and classes. Younger members of the indigenous community learned how to participate in the traditions of their own heritage, and the event set off years of discussions among different clans.
Here was a great example of how an arts festival can create an impactful experience linked to the past of the city where it happens.
Toronto and Luminato could be blessed if Ridge finds a comparable path to the multicultural soul of Ontario’s famously diverse capital city.
“This is something people often don’t understand about festivals. Working with local arts groups, they have the potential to create a legacy and leave a permanent footprint,” she says.
Ridge also caused a stir by restoring chamber music in a special way. She programmed 68 string quartets by Haydn. Some were free concerts, some were student concerts and some were ticketed events at premier venues featuring world-renowned musicians.
At one sold-out and much talkedabout performance, the London Haydn Quartet played period instruments at the spectacular home of a philanthropic couple, where the audience could view their knockout contemporary art collection while taking in ancient music.
Sargent, who arrived from the U.K. last year to replace Janice Price, Luminato’s founding CEO, is clearly delighted to be recruiting Ridge.
“I feel this could be a new chapter for the festival. As it happens, Josephine and I have both come here from other countries. We both want to make a blazing success for Toronto. I hope people will read us like that rather than by our passports.”
Of course, Weisbrodt is also a non-Canadian (he’s German) but he arrived when the CEO, Price, was Canadian. Starting now, Luminato will not have a Canadian in either of its two most crucial positions.
Candidates were found by Searchlight Recruitment, the head-hunting firm led by Daniel Weinzweig.
“We had a good group of candidates, including a number of Canadians,” says Sargent. “There were several people who could have done the job. But one person was the best and she was the one we got.” mknelman@thestar.ca